This weekend’s psalm says it best: “Justice shall flourish in his time.” It doesn’t say we hope justice flourishes, but that it will flourish.
I’ve written before how Christian hope isn’t a fuzzy “best wishes” or “hope for the best” type of hope, it is an expectation. Yet, I’m struggling this Advent to believe in the poetic promise of “the calf and the young lion shall browse together.” In a year where we’ve seen how deeply divided our country is, where we’ve lost so many beautiful people, where yet again, we may find ourselves during hard personal or professional transitions, it is hard to hope. This restless time, pregnant with stillness, this new beginning called Advent, reminds me of a very specific time of the day. Sometimes I find it hard to sleep and I wake up around 4:00 a.m. It is such an interesting time; if I really can’t fall back to sleep, I’ll open the window and see the sky go from black to a type of purple, then to a bruise-ish green and I’ll wait for the day with all of its promises, disappointments, excitements, joys and fears.
It is how the ancients like Isaiah must have felt under terrible oppression. They knew God wasn’t done with us yet, they knew God’s mercy and justice would prevail, but they didn’t know how. That is why they used poetry to explain their longing, a feeling more than a thought, a 4:00 a.m. feeling. It’s 4:00 a.m. for me in America, if I can borrow a little of Ronald Reagan’s famous campaign slogan. The tectonic shift between night and morning, when the light and air have certainly changed but it is not quite easy enough to say it is day or night. It can be unsettling sometimes, though I keep on, keeping on because tomorrow, as ever, the sun rises. Happy Advent.
I’ll be seeing you,
Elliot